Unless precautions are taken, rain gutters mounted on the roofs of buildings can and often do become obstructed and eventually clogged with debris. Certainly, falling leaves are the most frequent cause of gutter clogging but certainly not the only cause. Small twigs and branches commonly fall or are washed into rain gutters as a result of storms and high winds. Birds occasionally nest in rain gutters and such nests, being relatively large cohesive masses, can quickly and completely clog a rain gutter. Any of the foregoing will require the building occupant to free such rain gutters of debris. Otherwise, the gutter overflows and leaking foundations and basements often result.
Devices to shield rain gutters and prevent debris from being deposited in them are well known. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 4,032,456 (Berce) shows a gutter shield which uses a mesh cover supported by a solid frame and mounted to the roof using a strap-like hinge. Each hinge is affixed to the roof by shingle-piercing nails although an adhesive may be used for attachment if the hinge is perforated. The Berce shield is clearly intended for permanent mounting on the roof, the mesh shield being attached along only one edge so that the shield can be flipped upward for cleaning access to the gutter.
Another type of gutter shield is shown in U.S. Pat. No. 4,573,290 (Fleming). The Fleming shield is made entirely of mesh and is attached to the roof using nails which are driven through layers of overlapping shingles and into the underlying roof structure. In the alternative or in addition to the use of nails, cement bonding can be used. In either instance, the installation is clearly permanent and not intended for removal or, very possibly, for easy access to the interior of the gutter.
The screen shown in U.S. Pat. No. 4,745,710 (Davis) has a lower edge which is secured to a rain gutter and an upper plate which is merely inserted between layers of shingles without apparent use of adhesive or other fastening means.
Still another type of gutter guard is shown in U.S. Pat. No. 4,769,957 (Knowles). The front edge of the Knowles guard is attached to the front edge of the rain gutter using fasteners such as pop rivets or sheet metal screws. Retention of the rear or upper edge is by inserting such edge beneath the leading edges of the first course of shingles.
While the aforementioned shields and guards have been generally satisfactory for their intended purposes, they have certain disadvantages. In particular, each has an upper edge which is either permanently attached to the roof shingles by bonding or nails (the Fleming and Berce guards) or which is not attached to the roof at all except by insertion between shingles (the Knowles and Davis guards). In the latter instance, the lower edge of the shield is more or less permanently attached to the gutter. In any case, the resulting shield is difficult and time consuming to install and, if necessary, to remove.
Yet another disadvantage of such known shields is that their structures tend to be somewhat complex and require a number of different elements as with the Berce and Davis shields, for example. Others, like the Knowles gutter guard, use both plate and mesh elements to form the guard, the former being required to be bent or otherwise shaped as part of the manufacturing process.
An improved gutter shield assembly which is attachable to a roof without the use of nails or other shingle-piercing fasteners, which attaches to both the roof shingles and the front lip of the gutter, which is readily installed and removed and which embodies simplified construction and therefore is of lower cost, which would be an important advance in the art.